Jon Pareles on Franz Ferdinand

"Desire leading to trouble, romance soured by disillusionment, and melody harassed by jitters and dissonance are Franz Ferdinand’s essentials. The band started its set on Thursday night at Roseland with Alex Kapranos crooning, over placid keyboard chords, 'You don’t know I sing these songs about you.' Soon afterward the band was pounding a beat, and the song turned toward post-breakup bravado: 'It ain’t lonely alone/What would we talk about anyway?' Franz Ferdinand has been making those musical and emotional pivots from the beginning of its career. It prizes the craftsmanship of pop songwriting, with its concise hooks and choruses; it is also suspicious of all simple pleasures. … Franz Ferdinand’s first two albums relied on the friction of scrabbling, postpunk guitars against Beatles-tinged melody. Its newest one, 'Tonight' (Domino/Epic), evades that formula with keyboards and dance club bass lines, looking back to the new wave and electropop of INXS, New Order and Duran Duran rather than the barbs and spaces of Gang of Four. But the album is still a chronicle of hollow lust, tracing the loose story of a night out, from pickup to letdown" ("Music Review," New York Times, 5/8/09).